The Reading Steward's Handbook

The Reading Steward’s Handbook has been written to help those pursuing advanced credentials in the teaching of reading. The objective of the Handbook is to place much of what students needs regarding effective tutoring instruction in an easily referable, central location—a book! 

The Handbook is organized into four parts. Context is important, and so we begin Part I with a discussion of the history of reading instruction over the past half of the 20th century and the shift that has occurred following the COVID-19 pandemic. We briefly address dyslexia, and then explain the difference between a visual and linguistic approach to phonics instruction. The reader is introduced to Ehri’s (2005) phases of reading development to gain insight into how reading acquisition unfolds with proper instruction. This is followed by the Reading as an Interactive Instructional model, a heuristic to understand the connections between reading, its development, and instruction. Part II goes into detail regarding the diagnostic assessments used in the Clinic to determine the development of the processes critical to reading acquisition. The results of each of these are used locate the learner’s Zone of Proximal Development and the task of identifying where to begin instruction. Part III discusses implementation of reading instruction for each of the processes while Part IV reviews how to formatively assess the reader to determine if mastery learning has occurred, which reflects the effectiveness of instruction.